Saturday, March 16, 2013

Lighthouse

 
The parish church of St. Michael in Angyalföld, on the night of blizzard dawning to March 15, 2013

Since the 1910s, the wider area was in the focus of the social building of the capital, initially mainly with barracks serving as makeshift housing. The Catholics living in the neighborhood first went to Mass to the gym of the Tomori street barrack school. The congregation was founded in 1923, and the gym was transformed into a permanent chapel.

The St. Michael’s Church designed by Ernő Foerk, the architect of the Szeged Cathedral, was built a few years later, in 1929-30, directly next to the small housing estate which would soon become infamous under the name “Tripolis”. In 1933, the local ministry was elevated to the rank of parish. The church is not that pretty, but a good-proportioned, pleasing building with a brick revetment which has well resisted the vicissitudes of the past decades, and with some scattered decorative elements. The community center and the parish building next to it were finished in 1940 on the basis of Gáspár Fábián’s plans. The church is a popular landmark of this neighborhood which does not abund in beauty, its illuminated tower can be seen far from all directions. Which is good, because for example this is how my bike, like an old horse, finds back home in the evening when I’m tired.

Look, here below, how nicely the children, all six, posture in the photo, they certainly did not think that they would appear only a tiny pinhead. If any of them is still living, he or she must be about eighty.

 
The church in the year of its completition, in 1930. It can be clearly seen that on the tower, in the now empty square fields, there was a clockwork showing the precise time in all directions.

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